Leonard Pitts Jr.: Devices bring unintended consequences

5:29 AM,
Oct. 14, 2013

Leonard Pitts Jr.

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Leonard Pitts Jr.

The thing might be funny, except that somebody died. That part isn't funny at all. But the rest of it, the moments before Justin Valdez was killed, read like some twisted skit on "Saturday Night Live."

You have to get the picture as captured on surveillance video and described by authorities in a story published recently by the San Francisco Chronicle. You have to see the suspect, 30-year-old Nikhom Thephakaysone, sitting on the light-rail train, pulling out his .45-caliber pistol, pointing it across the aisle, putting it back, pulling it out several times again - and nobody notices because ...